


3Deep episode 7: Goodbye Girl

by dutchbuffy, Sylviavolk2000



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer; Angel the Series
Genre: Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-20
Updated: 2016-01-20
Packaged: 2018-05-14 23:44:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 18,884
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5763469
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dutchbuffy/pseuds/dutchbuffy, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sylviavolk2000/pseuds/Sylviavolk2000
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Storyline and original drafts - the heart of the story - by the members of Tea at the Ford. This is an edited version, posted at this archive by dutchbuffy and Sylviavolk2000.</p><p>While Buffy and Angel try to stem the growing plague of rogue Slayers, Giles has a mission to Chicago, and Wesley and Faith head south in a quest involving jaguar people, the god Kukulcan, and the Witz monster - the colossus that slumbers at the root of the world.</p>
            </blockquote>





	3Deep episode 7: Goodbye Girl

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Tea at the Ford](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=Tea+at+the+Ford).



　

3DEEP EPISODE SEVEN:

GOODBYE GIRL

　

Somewhere in Hell

Lilah watched her hand flesh out. Empty air grew twiggy bones, skeletal fingers grew red muscle and white tendon, pale skin and lastly, a French Manicure.

"Hey! Never a French Manicure on a white girl! I'm strictly a square nail, translucent lacquer gal." She checked the outfit. Sure enough, just like the last two times, they'd given her the rubbish she died in, complete with blood stain and rips. Someone must have dealt W&H a blow if these kind of low-level services weren't running on optimal. She rolled her eyes at the invisible demons taking care of the prep. "Business attire, dickheads. Don't forget the hair, the make-up, the hose. Last time you sent me in to Mr. Suvarta in bare legs. And me not having shaved since I died."

The case info landed in her brain with a painful wrench. Downside of a hell dimension. Really, she preferred her pain to come with sex, not with graphs and figures.

Slayer incidents, trends, casualty stats. Just lookitthat - layer upon layer of needless complexity. Make the Slayers crazy. That was supposed to make the Watchers crazy (see sidebar) and that was supposed to make Rupert Giles call in his old pals. Which would make the Slayers even crazier, and so on, and so on ... What labyrinthine brain had thought this up? Wait, asking the question was giving the answer. Mr. oh-so-sexy Immortal.

She'd always enjoyed ... negotiating ... with the Immortal. Why, even immaterial, her body still tingled pleasantly at the memory of various trips to Rome. Business and pleasure, both pre- and post-death. Proof that the life of the flesh continued, even after life itself had ended.

The business attire finally arrived around her body. "Not bad," she said grudgingly. "Okay, boys. Showtime."

Blink.

Just like that, she arrived in Mr. Suvarta's office, at the foot of the immense mahogany table. Mr. Suvarta shimmered darkly at the head, thankfully too far away for her to make out any details. So much less enticing than the Immortal. And speak of the Immortal, here was Flavio Lupazzi himself, lounging elegantly at her end of the table, toying with a brandy. The scent of Lupazzi’s expensive aftershave instantly teased her nostrils with memories of libido. His caressing smile made her glad she’d insisted on dressing well. She’d always enjoyed impressing a confident man.

A jumbotron-sized tv hung above the conference table. It flitted between images of today's primary targets. Rupert Giles and the unpleasant Roger Wyndham-Pryce, arguing. Giles with Lupazzi, drawing back fastidiously as the Immortal toyed with a desk pen. Wyndham-Pryce pere lecturing Wyndham-Pryce fils. Astral reception from the past was very clear today.

"Mr. Suvarta," she said. "Great to be here. I’m ready to brief you on the Watcher file." And it would take tact. Well, good news first, however little there was. And make it confident and convincing. "According to my figures, we're well ahead of target for Slayer incidents. And under budget, thanks to the inimitable Mr. Lupazzi's gift of all that Immortal goo." With a gracious tilt of the head toward the Immortal. "Useful stuff, Mr. Lupazzi – you know so well how to drive the little girls crazy."

The Immortal raised his shifter in a salute. He gestured and the images on the screen changed. Now Roger Wyndham-Pryce and a pooka bent over a lengthy legal document. The pooka was in quasi-human form but still piebald, and it leaned close to Wyndham-Pryce and breathed advice in his ear. Few humans could resist a pooka’s voice. Lilah's image sat across from them, watching as Wyndham-Pryce conferred with his counsel. Remembering, Lilah hid a smile, but she also braced herself. Damn Lupazzi and all his irresistible little jests.

The ring of wounds around her neck was already throbbing in warning. Mr. Suvarta said, "Our main target first. How much pressure are we putting on Rupert Giles? I'm expecting you to report a change in his touchy-feely every-Slayer-is-a-human-approach."

"The ever-tedious Mr Giles," Lupazzi drawled.

Lilah waved her hand, and the requisite file folder leaped into being. She opened it and made a show of flipping through sheets of bullet-points. Yes. Hell was in the details, and her particular punishment was to be subjected to the dull grind of business routine forever, even here in the fiery pit where once (long ago) a more naive Lilah Morgan, neophyte evil lawyer, had expected to meet with the horrific. Horned devils with pitchforks and leers. Cauldrons of torment. Color and guignol. No. True hell was perpetual grey.

"Mr. Giles still retains his naive affection for Slayers," she reported. Lupazzi tut-tutted, and Suvarta drummed his claws on the table. "However, he also fails to notice we're targeting him," Lilah continued brightly. "And his fatigue compounds every day." She shut the folder, steeled herself, and went on, "Returning to the second target. Your planned subversion of Roger Wyndham-Pryce was a stroke of genius. His soul would have made such a fine decoration above your desk, sir. However, he refused the bait."

The table shortened unpleasantly, bringing Suvarta’s features into focus. Her stomach roiled.

On the tv screen, Wyndham-Pryce pere was briskly crossing fine-print off the contract, while the pooka demon waved roan-spotted arms and protested.

"He refused? You failed?"

"The _pooka_ failed, yes." Better make sure the blame went to someone else. "After accepting payment, no less. Wyndham-Pryce pere did not sign over his soul."

Suvarta's head lowered. The walls of the boardroom began to swirl ominously, and the clean lines and curves of the mahogany table assumed a wavery look, as if on the verge of throwing off some disguise. Lilah's sense of balance lurched. "Of course the erring pooka has received its punishment. Double the usual. I saw to it myself. And though Wyndham-Pryce pere struck out the clause tendering his soul, he did indeed sign our contract. The tiende sacrifice will still take place--"

The screen went blank. The ceiling vanished, as did the floor. What replaced them was worse than any pageant of fire and brimstone: nothingness. Grey nothing forever without bottom or top, and she knew from harsh experience that if she looked into it, its greyness would seep in at her eyes and invade her, erasing her memories bit by bit. She'd already lost so much to previous punishments.

Smile. _Smile._ "Meanwhile our central plan - gaining control of the Slayers - is close to fruition. The harvest will come. It will. Think of it, sir." A little of the greyness retreated. "Besides, isn't Roger Wyndham-Pryce the kind who'll end up in hell anyway? And he’ll be dead soon. We can purchase his soul off whoever ends up taking possession. At a bargain-basement price, too."

The room snapped back into focus, floor and ceiling restored. "A good price for a Pryce!" Suvarta guffawed. A black sparkle still tainted the pupils of his eyes, though - inverted sable flames twinkling, a clear warning. "Be sure you deliver, Ms. Morgan. On all our targets."

"When have I ever failed you?" She lifted her chin (carefully not too high) proud that her voice hadn't wavered. Maybe she’d danced a little too close to the edge on this file ... she could have ensured that Roger Wyndham-Pryce signed away his soul, if she'd wanted. But Lupazzi was so deliciously busy sticking knives in Suvarta’s back. And then he’d whispered so delightfully in Lilah’s ear. She hadn’t been able to resist joining in.

Events had left her a serpent with a broken ... neck. But her fangs? No, hell hadn't pulled those.

A good thing the boss didn’t know.

With a flip of a tentacle, Suvarta changed the tv image. Now the screen showed real-time views from Earth. "Let us watch events unfold," he invited. "Another brandy, Flavio? Ms. Morgan, coffee for me. Now then ... whose undoing shall we enjoy first?"

　

Act One

  1. Kathmandu



Buffy leaned against a plank wall, axe cradled in her arms, ribs heaving. The air up here in the Himalayas was so thin. Angel had it easy, but she needed to breathe, and there just wasn't enough oxygen. But Giles had been right, she was needed here. And Giles needed to know what was happening to his young Slayers.

Footsteps drummed, briefly. A shadow flitted by in the corner of her eye. Buffy flung the axe while she whirled her body around and loped after it to see if it had struck. She ran down the alley, jumping tire-ruts and runnels of nasty-smelling liquids. There it was. A possessed creature writhing wounded at her feet, teeth snapping, arms flailing, forehead thumping mindlessly against the muddy ground.

This ... thing had been a Slayer.

"Angel?" she called. "Got her."

"Good." Angel came around the corner, joined her and leaned over the wounded girl. Not too close, but she still convulsed, trying to rise and claw him. "What a pretty sight." He’d herded her in Buffy’s direction, making an ambush possible. Now he breathed in, taking the girl’s scent, then shook his head firmly. "All I smell is Slayer."

"At least we got her. Something to video and send to Giles. We’ll see what he makes of it." Buffy scowled down at their capture. "Okay. Brace yourself, this is gonna be spurty."

She pinned the wounded girl down firmly with one foot, and wrenched the axe out. Blood did, indeed, spurt lustily. The poor kid wouldn’t die of it, but still, ow.

There, she’d collapsed.

This just didn't get any easier.

"What?" Angel said impatiently. He was turning into a real bear these days.

Buffy sighed. "Pick her up. We’ll put her in the pen."

When she’d seen the tiger cages Andrew had hired she thought he'd gone nuts, but she'd underestimated him. They were perfect for Slayers gone bloodlusty. Angel hefted the fallen girl without a wince for the blood on his hands, but the axe wound itself was already closing, thank goodness. He could handle her if she suddenly upped and started fighting again. When it came to Angel, Buffy never had to worry.

But the reports of Slayers going whacko were dead right. Slayers turning into monsters, babbling in tongues, trying to kill and eat whoever they encountered. Dichen had killed one, and Buffy had been to the morgue and seen the corpse. Just a perfectly normal corpse – she’d seen a lot of corpses in her time, and could certify this one as grade-A nothing strange. Dichen was majorly broken-up about it and needed a holiday, or counseling or something. Dichen – a tough fighter if Buddy’d ever seen one - seemed unaffected by the crazy bug, maybe because she'd been visiting her parents in a village three passes away. So something had infected the others, something contagious. But what?

Buffy had ordered the dead girl to be quarantined, the body crated and shipped to London. Dichen had come after her and told her that even though everyone had said yes, ma'am, that it wasn’t going to happen. Against their religion.

That sucked, but then again, religion. She'd briefly contemplated just breaking in and stealing the body, but this wasn't Sunnydale. Borders, airports, the big wide world, blah. It cramped her style. All things considered, she wished she was back in Sunnydale with the Scoobies.

That just brought her back to thoughts of Willow. Worry, worry ...

"Hey, Angel. Who do you worry about?"

"Wesley," he said at once. Buffy snorted, but apparently he was serious. "I don’t worry about you," he added. "About Spike, a little. But that’s probably a sign that I’m cracking."

"First the fracking, then the cracking."

"Ouch."

Why was everything going to hell all of a sudden? All at once. It gave her the slayer tingles. Willow vanishing down the Well, young Slayers going nuts, dire premonitions galore. As if some unknown Big Bad was messing around with them all.

There was always a new Big Bad in the wings, it seemed.

Or was it just that she had - to be honest - this vague itchy bitchy feeling over Spike getting it on with Illyria. Because, well, she felt Spike ought to be on her dance card forever.

What to do, what to do. Call Giles and ask him if he had dire premonitions too, and hopefully he'd tell her she was delusional. That was a good start. She pulled out her cell and hit the keys.

  1. Los Angeles



Wesley had always understood that he wasn't good at parties. The cheap beer wasn't helping, not that his liver was in any shape to be choosy. He had another lukewarm swig. He could see Folasade on the dance floor, in a group of cavorting Slayers, her graduation gift - a carved arbutus-wood stake with a plastic mortarboard glued to the hilt - strapped ostentatiously to her belt. It should have been good to see her, see them all, so unselfconsciously enjoying themselves. If one couldn't celebrate at a graduation, when could one?

He tried to remember the point when everything around him had grown so distant and pointless.

He couldn’t actually taste the beer. When it came to that, it was difficult to feel sensation in his fingers or toes, and at odd moments he lost the ability to see color. Twice already that evening, the sounds of music and laughter had faded to a tinny buzzing in his ears, hardly more than the whine of a mosquito. All par for the course, in his current state of living death. He couldn’t really claim to be surprised.

Nor could he force himself to care.

Slayers packing the dance floor, twirling in each others’ arms; Slayers with cigarettes at ready, ducking out for a quick smoke on the fire escape. For an instant he spotted Faith herself. Her brilliant lipstick caught the light as she blew a kiss at someone—who? oh, what did it matter?—and her laughter was the only sound of life in the world. Everywhere she went, the grey fog seemed to lift, and he could almost imagine the people around her mattered.

She saw him and swerved in his direction.

"Hey, Watcher. Been looking for you."

"Faith." Wes kept his eyes on the fire escape. The noise from out there had become louder.

Faith fisted him in the shoulder. Probably there wouldn't be much of a bruise come morning. "What’s up?" she said. "You look like your dog died. And you've barely touched that beer."

"That's because it’s vile."

"So pour it out and get something you want. C'mon, Wes, whatever it is, it can't be that bad."

How little she knew.

The noise from outside had resolved into shouting, and two young Slayers - what were their names again? - burst in. "Karghh’ul demon! Attacking the recreation centre down the street! And there’s a whole schoolbus of orphans in there! And nuns!"

"With kittens!"

He really ought to be able to remember their names.

There was a moment’s silence.

"No foolin’?" Folasade whooped. "Sounds like it’s time to move the party!"

There was a race to the weapons chest, swords and stakes passed out. In seconds Slayers were boiling out of the room, bounding down the fire stair and leaping to the street below. Folasade led them. Wes looked for somewhere to set down his stein, vaguely aware he should join them. Watchers always backed their Slayers, after all.

But he’d only cast a shadow over their party. They were young yet. Let them revel.

"Let the girls have their fun." Faith echoed his thought. "If they can’t handle one demon, we haven’t done our job."

She hopped up on the drinks table and sat, feet dangling. "And you did the job right," she added firmly. "Nothing to worry about, Wes. Don’t look so glum."

Wesley watched the door. Outside the sounds of pursuit, enthusiastic shouts and clashes of weaponry, were fading down the alleyway. We need to add a session on stealth, he thought.

"My father appears to have offered himself to Wolfram and Hart as a demon sacrifice," he heard himself say.

Faith’s face went blank. She was silent for a moment; then she reached under the drinks table, coming up with a bottle. "First things first," she said. "Scotch?"

Color in the greyness, his Faith. His original assignment, his first Slayer. Among Watchers it was a byword that one’s first Slayer was like one’s first love; you never forgot.

At least hard alcohol could still affect him—he could feel it burn all the way to his stomach. "Ah. Thanks." How much of that sensation came from the Immortal's spell? All of it, perhaps. It was perversely comforting. He took another swig and tried to smile. "Precisely what was called for."

"No prob. So. I was wrong. What's this about your Dad?"

Wesley considered the darkness beyond the doorway. "My father," he said distantly, "has signed a contract with Wolfram and Hart, giving them the right to sacrifice him to the god Kukulcan."

"What the hell for? Uh. Sorry. I mean - "

Wesley shook his head. "A reasonable question. I asked it myself. Apparently, it’s for benefits to be named in document 39A-27-Q-4Z, or something similar, filed elsewhere under an anti-locator spell. My efforts to retrieve it were unsuccessful."

Faith frowned, distracted. "How’d you find out about the contract in the first place?"

"I inadvertently came upon it in the Wolfram and Hart files while pursuing another inquiry," Wesley said. Don't ask, he thought urgently, and Faith obligingly didn’t.

"So who's this demon?"

"Kukulcan. A Mayan death-god. Human sacrifices were routinely performed to him before the Conquest."

"Oh-kay." Faith stood and stretched. "Any intel on the sacrifice? When and how?"

"In the Yucatan his rites were usually performed at the new moon. That would be two days from now."

She stared at him. "Jesus, Wes. Why are you still here?"

"I found the contract earlier today," said Wes. "I'm booked on the six a.m. flight to Mexico City tomorrow morning. Then a connector flight. Then a rental car to a place called Xibalba."

Faith nodded. "Good. I'll just chase down Folasade and get her to cover for me while we're gone."

Wesley, startled, followed her to the fire escape. The sounds of battle from the rec centre intensified abruptly, ending in a wild cheer. "Sounds like she’ll be back soon," Faith said.

"Yes, but - this is a private matter, Faith. I never intended you to - "

He saw the flash of her teeth, bared in a grin: light in the darkness, indeed. "Join the Slayers, see the world. It's time I had a holiday."

  1. London



"And no idea what it was that drove these girls mad? Well, thanks for flying in there, Buffy." ... "No, no word from Willow yet. Yes, I’m worried about her too. Definitely. But we shouldn't necessarily expect to hear from her yet. That area of the Cotswolds is notorious for dropped calls." ... "Yes." ... "Yes, yes." ... "Alright, let me know when you're back in Rome."

Giles succeeded in ending the call and sat up, only just not toppling a monolithic stack of occult reference volumes. His back hurt. His knees hurt. God, he was tired. He blinked and reached for his tea, long since gone cold.

That call from the aether, which had felt like Willow. It haunted his conscience.

There was no question it had been Willow sending. The power she channelled was a signature in itself. He should never have sent her to the Well alone. And wasn't there the tiniest bit of truth to the idea that he sent Willow specifically because Flavio told him not to? He suppressed a pang of guilt.

And ah, a new filebox on top of the stack of papers threatening to slither right off the desk. He wished they would. In laying the filebox snare, Andrew undoubtedly thought he was being subtle. Sadly, it did qualify as excitement in the Admin Hell that seemed to be Giles' fate.

"Slayerlust", said the label. Andrew lived in a tabloid kingdom. Of course he was nowhere in sight to harangue.

Giles thumbed through them, skimming the names printed on top, the dates, and gradually slowed, absorbed. Andrew had selected incident reports from the past week that, taken together with Buffy's phoned report, were alarming. When had this epidemic of serious control incidents started? There couldn't be that many going right off the rails. Could there?

Rapid feet bounded up the stairs. Friday night was always Balti night, from the restaurant below, and he'd been half counting on Andrew bringing in a fragrant stack of white-wrapped boxes; but Andrew erupted into the room empty-handed.

"Mr. Giles, did we get something from Chicago?"

Giles flipped through the reports. Ah, Rona.

He opened the folder and started reading. His eyebrows twitched. Andrew had been right. The top file read exactly like the mysterious slayer rage Buffy had been fighting. Young Slayer, sudden inexplicable rage, innocents bystanders dying. Or no, it was worse. The Slayer's mother. Someone had to go to Chicago right now. But who? Buffy and Angel were too far away, Spike and Illyria busy in the Cotswolds.

"Buffy was right," Giles said. "This is a mess. And I don't like the speed with which the problem's multiplying." They looked at each other; it was disconcertingly like looking into a mirror. "Time I got back to being in the field. Or past time, maybe."

"The jet's still in Kathmandu," Andrew said unhelpfully.

He'd have to face the nine-hour flight on a commercial plane. Leg room. Bad food. He should never have un-retired.

"Here's your overnight bag with your passport in it. See, I knew you'd be needed. I'll hunt down Rona and get her to meet you at the other end. And I'll call you the minute anybody checks in from the Cotswolds. Lucky you're here to go. That poor girl's gonna need you," Andrew said.

Giles found himself outside in the usual London mizzle, bag in hand, feeling distinctly herded.

  1. Mexico



The jeep lurched, and Wesley bit back a curse. Beside him, Faith just laughed.

The roads were adequate - barely - but had declined in quality once they'd left the tourist trail from Merida Airport to Chichen Itzá. The red earth glistened with the obscene freshness of recently spilled blood, but even so the jungle was already encroaching on it. The greens of the foliage, the blueness of the sky were absurd, indecent, unnaturally bright, as if God had personally photoshopped them to taunt the devil. Or to please the moon goddess Ix-Chel. Who knew?

"Wes, man, all we got here is jungle, ancient ruins, and then more jungle. It’s like some old B movie. You gotta lean back and enjoy the show."

No doubt Faith had grown up on B-films with feathered priests killing naked virgins on top of blunt pyramids. Threatening the always-Caucasian leading actress, who would be carried out of danger by the handsome square-jawed actor. In her case, though, he'd expect her to carry any handsome actors out of danger.

"Perhaps you watched the wrong films."

"Story of my life." She yawned and checked her watch.

"I'm afraid we're not there yet," he said. "The dzonot we’re visiting isn't on any map, Google Maps only gives us an excellent view of the tops of trees, and there is no accessible road to the site. We'll be walking the last part."

"Yay."

Wesley sighed. "Look for a sign marked Cunchintoc. That's where we're to meet Ixtab."

"She ever have a watcher?" Faith asked.

"Good point. None was mentioned. Any idea who the New Council sent to Middle America?"

Faith shrugged. "Right now, Kennedy handles it from South America. But all I know is, she says the Slayers on her watch are a handful. Course they all say that. Ken says Ixtab is Quechuan. Is that like, Aztec?"

"Aztec is further North, central Mexico. Ixtab is Mayan. They also had a highly sophisticated civilization…" He could almost hear her eyes starting to roll at the lecture. Well, then. Cut to the chase. "The Mayans more or less just walked away from their cities overnight. Abandoned them. Nobody knows why."

"From our point of view, that's never good," Faith said. "Any vamps to slay? Dragons maybe? Dragons would be kinda fun."

"Yes. It's called the Witz monster."

One didn't need sourcebooks or an occult library to have heard of the Witz monster: largest of all denizens of the earth's interior, and, some said, older even than the Old Ones. But benign. The Witz was the fabled Guardian of the Mountain. Or perhaps itself the Mountain. Reports varied. "It’s not a dragon you should slay," he said firmly. "Think of it as, ah, analogous to the Deeper Well’s Guardian. Yes, like that. Something to be protected."

He hadn't done so well, protecting the last guardian he'd met; maybe this was a chance to even that score.

Faith was predictably unimpressed. "Whatever. Name sounds like a joke. What else you got?"

"Kukulcan's said to have a serpent body with feathers and a jaguar face. With fangs. Just so you'll know, if you come across him."

"Hey, bonus, fangs are my best thing. Keep going. Is there more?"

He blinked. She was asking him to continue the lecture?

Ahead, the road sloped to a bridge that had a 'don't try me' look. Bugger. On its far side stood a signpost, askew. He could make out a fragmentary "Cu" and "hinto". Finally.

He stopped the jeep at the edge of the bridge.

"Uh-oh," Faith said, pulling herself upright out of her seat by the top of the windscreen. "Still sure this isn't a B movie? 'Cause it looks like there’s boards missing, and dude, grass ropes? Isn’t there another way across?" She already knew the answer, but, being Faith, she had to ask, Wes supposed.

"Afraid not," he said. Cheerfully, to get the predictable eyeroll.

"Okay. Gimme a sec."

She did a handstand on the windscreen and flipped herself over the front of the car. And strode across the bridge, bouncing now and again on the wooden slats.

When she got to the other side, she waved and gave him a thumbs-up. "Foot traffic only," she called across the river, "ditch the rental, hon. There’s a couple iffy boards."

"I’ll be careful," he called back. He slung their two packs and the weapons bag over his shoulder. Very Stewart Granger. He ought to be feeling a proper rogue vampire hunter.

It wasn’t until he was three-quarters of the way across that he glanced down, through the gaps between the bridge’s boards, toward the river below. A shiver went over his skin as he realized its color, redder than the red earth of the road, redder than the hanging flowers above: scarlet. And thick. And blood.

Looking down, he stepped on a rotten board.

His boot went through. Down suddenly on one knee, he lost hold of the packs; they thumped down heavily, the weapons bag following, and two more boards caved in. Above, a bridge-rope snapped like a whip.

Both packs had already tumbled through the gap, falling toward the distant river. Wesley thought 'sod the weapons bag', lurched, and leaped flat-out for the riverbank.

Faith swore and darted forward, catching his hand and yanking him toward herself.

Her feet skidded on the muddy bank. "Shit!"

And then a thin brown hand closed around her elbow. Wesley was jerked after her, landing safely on firm footing. The newcomer had a Slayer’s strength—ah, no wonder. "Ixtab?" he said.

If he hadn't been expecting to meet a Slayer here, he would certainly have taken her for a skinny young boy. She wore a thin blue t-shirt under sweat-soiled overalls. Sinewy arms, shoulders bunched with muscle, and a tightly clenched mouth, deep lines already at its corners - a prematurely aged look. Her skin was the color of cocoa-butter tinged with grey. Old chocolate. A machete in a much-abused scabbard hung at her side.

Her gaze was on the bridge behind them. An ominous tearing sound rose from it as more ropes snapped and the whole edifice plummeted into the gorge, boards striking water in gouts of impossible red. The opposite bank caved in just as suddenly, taking along a sizeable chunk of road—and the jeep too, of course.

Farewell, weapons bag and rental deposit. And farewell, easy return. The jungle roared at them with a thousand little mouths, a symphony of jaguar roars, monkey shrieks, and the overtones of a billion mosquitoes suiting up for battle.

"We are being watched," said the girl who must be Ixtab. "Come."

She took them a long way from the river of blood before halting.

"You are the Slayer?" she said to Faith, and there was something in the line of her back that put Wesley on alert.

"Yo, sis." Faith stuck out a hand. "Cool save back there."

Ixtab ignored the hand. Her mouth clenched, her chin jutting. She ignored Wesley entirely, all her attention on Faith.

"You're old," she said.

"Hey," said Faith, apparently pleased. "Give you the chance, you'll be an old lady like me someday too. You always work alone till now, Ixtab?"

"Si. Still am. Nobody comes here."

Her gaze tracked something in the backdrop of brilliant leaves, beyond Faith's right shoulder. "Uhn," she said, a chuff of a sound. "They follow faster than I thought."

"Yeah," Faith said. "I heard ‘em too. They tracked us from the bridge," she said to Wes. "A lot of them." She turned back toward Ixtab. "This here's Wesley. A friend to Slayers. I’m just his backup, this is his quest. We’re here to find his dad."

Ixtab looked him up and down. "You were fools to come."

"Well, let's find out." Faith swiped sweat off her forehead. "We're taking the road to Xibalba. Can you help?"

"Is that your desire? Your wish and your risk? Do you consent to it?"

"Sure do," Faith said. "That cool?"

Ixtab put a hand to her mouth and hooted.

Of course.

Men swarmed out of the undergrowth, surrounding them.

Small dark men with wizened faces, not dressed up with feather cloaks and jade fighting-clubs but in soiled blue-jeans and cotton undershirts, like farm laborers. No nose plugs. No ear plugs. No feathered head-dresses or jaguar masks, but their large liquid eyes might have looked off the walls of a Precolumbian temple. Ancient eyes, with the still depths of jungle wells in them.

The man closest to Wesley blinked, a slow liquid blink. Gold lights moved in his eyes framed in tawny fronds and black, black shadows, like still pools with slit pupils upright, like gold fur rumpled and rosette-spotted, soft as plush. He pushed a breath out between dog-teeth wickedly bared. Shadows shifted around him, crowding close, shoulder to shoulder.

A solid ring of bodies, too many to count.

Furred bodies, yellow eyes, mouths panting open upon white fangs.

Not men. Not men at all.

  1. Mexico



Faith remembered a long, bored afternoon with Spike in Buffy’s basement, just before Sunnydale went crater-shaped. They’d chugged tequila and shot the breeze, and he’d told her about the were-jaguars of central America. Jaguar girls only did it in cat-shape, he’d bragged, only during the full moon. Couldn’t shift shapes any other time, he said, just like werewolves. He’d also claimed their turf was way south of Mexico, down around Peru way. Guess this bunch hadn’t consulted Spike.

Wesley stumbled along behind her. Sure he was her guy and she loved him, but no getting around it, he was as clumsy as a zombie these days. Whenever she did a check for escape routes, one of the little dark guys stepped into her line of sight. No visible weapons on them, but they could change shape at will. Take that, Spike. You didn't know jack.

So fangs and claws. Not much fun. Try to fight their way out, and Wes’d be kitty litter.

Just ahead, Ixtab slipped through the jungle without breaking a sweat or disturbing a single leaf.

Faith slapped another mosquito. Mosquitoes were totally into her, although it was only hours since she'd practically showered with Deet. They all seemed to be zeroing in on her. Woulda been nice if Wesley shared the pain, but no, they didn’t even settle on him. She snorted, and Ixtab glanced back and curled her lip.

"Afraid?" she said. "Better be."

"Ixtab," Wes said. "I saw you react when I spoke of Xibalba. Why?"

Something very old flashed from Ixtab’s eyes. "Ah Puch is no concern of touristas."

"This Ah Puch," Faith said, slapping the back of her neck. "Or whatever. Just another demon, right? And killing demons is what we do. You're a Slayer. You know how we roll."

"Kill demons. Kill were-jaguars too." Ixtab's mouth clenched. "No? Be warned, old woman. Ah Puch is no demon. He is a god."

Old woman. Hah. But she’d still take it as a compliment.

"Is he the mountain?" Wesley asked.

"The mountain. The tree. The well. All one." A quick touch to her heart. "He guards."

"The Witz," Wesley said.

Okay, name soup madness. But Wes seemed satisfied.

Ixtab halted. So did everyone else. The jungle was so thick there was no way to know if they'd arrived somewhere; all Faith could see was a patch of sky directly overhead, a break in the leaf-canopy like a landmark. New moon, the night Wesley’s dad was to be sacrificed, was tonight.

Wes was looking up too, probably thinking the same thing as she was, poor guy.

Outlines of stone structures poked through the growth on every side, masked until now in the heavy growth. Walls crumbled there, eaten away by roots and rain. The steep steps of pyramids rose toward the treetops, one directly to the left, one to the right. Ahead, what had looked like orange flowers flecking green leaves resolved into a cave-mouth, sunshine pouring into it.

The jaguar-men crowded around them, crowding close without speaking.

A glimmer of light reflected in Ixtab’s eyes: jaguar-yellow. Jaguar eyes. A slow blink, and her face looked furred. Blurred. No longer human.

"I serve the guardian of the mountain," she said. "I have dreamed. You are the War Twin, old woman. Xbalanque." Her thumb stabbed out, pointing at Wes. "You are her brother Hunahpu, Hunter of Birds. You ask to enter the sacred cenote? Then do."

The cave was a chink in the rock face, entirely filled by a rough stone slab. It looked like an altar. Ixtab squatted down and gestured. The jaguar-pack pushed forward, driving Faith and Wes onto the slab.

The slab teetered when they stepped onto it.

There was barely enough room for them to stand together on its surface. Yeah, it was an altar, no doubt about it. And pretty unsteady under their combined weight too. No doubt about that either. Dammit, wasn’t that the way? Wesley shifted his balance, and one side of the slab dipped several inches. She grabbed his arm. They both held their breath.

Even tiny little movements made the slab shift.

"Say why you come," Ixtab ordered.

Wesley breathed out gently. "We come to save my father."

She looked startled. "Has he not gone ahead?"

"Not yet. He remains upon this side."

"This reason is good," she agreed. "But we do not know you. How can we recommend you? It has been long, and the god is always hungry."

"Er," Wesley said. "How may we show that we are worthy, and also wise?"

Ixtab gave a grudging nod. Faith wanted to cheer. Go Watcher go!

"It is for the lords of death to judge," Ixtab said, "if you pass their tests. So it has always been." She touched the rough dry wall of the cave, tracing symbols carved there. Even in the dim light, Faith knew that look. Some of the writing looked hacked into the rock by knives, some scratched by immense claws, some eaten acid-deep in the stone. Evil graffiti, courtesy of the hell dimensions. Oh yeah, this was a hellmouth.

Man, she hated this kinda place.

Wesley nodded. "Then there is only one question. How do we return?"

Ixtab smiled, or bared jaguar fangs. Faith couldn’t tell which. Her hand curled into a fist.

She said, "Reach the end, maybe I come fetch you." And pounded the slab.

It gave way beneath them.

Act Two

  1. Chicago



After a long, cramped flight, after watching two boring movies and falling asleep during the interesting one, Giles managed to collect his meagre luggage and locate the Chicago airport exit. Outside, in the darkness and rain, it looked no different from any Western airport. Car beams bored yellow tunnels through the drizzle. He waited while hotel shuttles came and went.

Finally, almost an hour after the agreed time, a shabby jeep drove up. Inside sat not one, but five tough-looking teenagers in combat gear. Rona, at the wheel, was Chicago’s senior Slayer these days; since Sunnydale she had aged from gruff teenager with baby-fat into tough, lean Mother Goose. The goslings looked impossibly young.

"Hullo Rona."

Rona nodded and gestured to the back of the vehicle. Giles put in his overnight bag in the trunk himself and climbed in next to her. One of the teenagers had to cram in on the already crammed backseat.

"Mr. Giles. Vacation time, is it? These are my girls. Doing the frontline search and rescue. Got anything they need to know?" He shook his head. She didn't try to pretend she was surprised. She drove off jerkily.

"Where are we going?" he asked.

"To the site of the - accident."

"Murder, you mean!" the backseat piped in.

" Hush," Rona said. "We know nothing yet."

After half an hour of driving Giles had completely lost any sense of where they were going. All the streets were badly lit, potholed, lined by desultory businesses or ill-kept homes. The car pulled up at a nondescript crossroads, indistinguishable from the other hundred they'd passed.

"All right. Destiny, Jada, together. Des, do exactly what Jada says."

The girls crawled out without a word and headed off into the darkness and rain. As far as Giles could see, all they had were stakes and one bow.

Quarter of an hour later, same thing near a brightly lit diner and vast stretches of nothing. It was like being inside that Nighthawks painting by Hopper.

"Ng, same goes for you and Lottie. Now move. Abby's crew's due back at the rendezvous in ten; they'll brief you there."

The other girls loped off. Impressive. Staged for him to see, showing off how much she was in control here?

It wasn't hard to link it to his time in Sunnydale, when he'd sent off an equally youthful, unarmed Buffy without a cell phone into the restless night. What made it worse now? Chicago was so large, they were so few. London at least had the subway, the Amsterdam girls their bicycles. Something needed to be done, but what? And from what budget?

Giles coughed. "So, Maria. Why did she snap? Under what influence?"

Rona wrenched the steering wheel around a dumpster in the middle of the road. Giles swallowed bile. "Wish I knew. Hoping you'd tell me," she said, staring straight ahead.

Giles loosened his collar a bit and slid his seat backward. His stomach was killing him. He hesitated between delicacy and bluntness. Didn't want to yank the rug from under Rona's supervision, but Rona's gruffness and reticence weren't getting him anywhere.

"I'm glad you came," Rona said.

Giles spluttered out a surprised cough.

"Finding Maria first, that's key. So I catch her, pin her down, and then you can do your Watcher stuff on her, right? Figure out her problem."

"I have spells of finding ready." Preventing more carnage was all they could hope for, at this point.

He remembered the grim details of the report: There had been no apparent cause, and no warning. Maria Alverez, aged sixteen, seemingly no more unstable than any of a thousand other young Slayers – until she’d gone berserk and run off into the night. Leaving behind – he swallowed, recalling the stark hospital and morgue photos – her own mother, dead, and her younger brother critically injured.

  1. Mexico



How in hell?

Faith's head broke the surface of the rushing river. River, wtf? Lights burst against her eyes. Where was Wes? Oh, right, she had him. Seemed like she'd mangled his fingers, clawing at them--some of them were hanging by mere shreds of skin. But no, they were whole and squirming in hers. She yanked mightily to bring him to the surface, failed, swore, and bumped the crown of her head against a low rock ceiling. A cave? Yes. Sparkly crystal mica dazzled her with a billion points of bling, but the sensation was way too much like being swallowed down some wicked big shark-toothed throat.

Damn that Ixtab. She turned onto her back and floated along, fending off the ceiling with her free arm, and kept hauling on Wes's hand.

Ugh. Slime rubbed off the rock overhead. Stinky fungus shredded off in strips, like rotting dead flesh. All over her arm and even in smears on her face, glowing. Dead fish flesh, dammit. Better not heave now though. Priorities, girl.

"Wesley!"

He wasn't coming up for air. He had to be drowning. Okay. Faith gulped a deep breath, braced herself, and dived. And groped in the murky river to grab Wes's other hand and bring him up--

A rotting corpse, resplendent in Wesley's brown leather jacket, surfaced. Swollen eyeballs rolled out of their sockets, one eye breaking free entirely and floating away. A tail of frayed nerve-endings floated behind it.

She almost ralphed after all. Then she turned her face away so she couldn't see the illusion, and tightened her grasp.

There was a roaring ahead. Wind blasted down the cavern tunnel. White foam boiled up and the river went over an edge, into an abyss, into forever, the water scattering, falling, falling.

She pulled the rotting corpse to her chest and held it tight.

They fell.

  1. Chicago



Giles had been hesitating, but it had to be said. "Taking on a fellow Slayer is not like fighting vampires. Are you prepared for it?"

Rona patted her bulging purse. "Handcuffs, trank gun, chloroform and leather cords soaked in holy water." Rona could be distressingly literal. "I'm prepared."

Giles rubbed the crease between his eyebrows and suppressed a sigh. "I don't mean the box of weapons, Rona. Maria's dangerous; we can't just go in blind. What do you know?"

"Mr. Giles, I been busy."

He needed to weigh the pros and cons. He'd better have some attack spells ready, too. Going in with just Rona was very light-brigade, but this was Rona’s turf. Her call, not his. He had no authority here.

Being a Watcher had been simpler once. The Watcher guided his Slayer, the Slayer obeyed her Watcher.

Once.

"Scene of the crime first then," he said. "I might be able to pick up her signature there. So those girls we dropped off are all the Slayers for the whole of Chicago?"

"There's also me, and there's Abby’s two on the South Side, and then there was Maria. Slayer Central sprung for the phones, so thanks for that. We're all on each other's speed dial."

Giles gratefully crossed off cell phones from his just-started to-do list.

"But a cell phone's not enough. I offered to give up an hour three days a week, so Maria could at least basic-train with me in the dojo. Didn’t work out."

"So she's never had any training from you?"

"We couldn't work out a schedule. Maria and her mom had her life planned out already. A+ girl, wanted to be a lawyer, you know? But she offered to patrol her own home ground. That was good, saved us work. And the Latin community is secretive, they like to deal with their own shit. We were gonna train her," Rona said grimly. "When we could make time."

Giles wanted to say, but why didn't you ring? Why didn't you tell us? But he swallowed the words. He wouldn’t have been able to offer anything but promises and pathetic dribbles of monetary support and Rona must have known that.

"We're here," Rona said.

A block of one-storey, run-down shops. Half of which had been boarded up and scrawled over in many alphabets. He recognized them all, top-heavy grain silo of knowledge that he was. None of it would be any use to him. Rona parked in a back alley enlivened by rubbish and dumpsters. Compared to this, his headquarters above the Balti shop were affluence.

"Here in the alley?" Giles asked.

"In the diner. This is where it happened. Family diner, Maria worked here nights. Saving up for law school, y’know?" She nodded her head in the direction of a ruined back entrance. She had her hands on axe and stake. "Back door. Empatbats hang around murder sites sometimes. Lemme go in first to check for them."

The entrance had been boarded up, but nobody had cleared away the rubble of an explosion or some other destructive event.

Some sheets of paper lay pinned underneath a pile of gravel-sized masonry bits. He pulled them out and held them in the light of the torch. Two letters, stapled together as if for safekeeping.

"What’s that?" Rona reached out and snatched them out of his hand. She peered at the topmost.

"It's a recruitment letter," Giles said. "To Maria. From me."

He didn’t remember sending it, but then writing new Slayers and offering training at the London school was part of his job. There were so many new Slayers.

The second sheet was another recruitment letter, from Wolfram and Hart.

Rona returned them with a shrug. "Huh." She motioned him back, rubbed her hands on her pants, and peeled the plywood off as if it was paper. No door beyond, just wreckage. "I'm point."

He clamped the torch between his teeth. It felt unpleasant instead of glamorous and competent. Possibly those blokes on Spooks and so on used torches with a smaller circumference.

He was still picking his way through the rubble in the small hallway leading to the diner proper when Rona returned, unruffled.

"All clear. Whatcha doing?"

"Just checking for possible clues," he said. He'd also prepared Nicodemus' Banefire, just in case. Perhaps he should have brought weapons of his own.

But taking weapons through Customs these days ... He wasn't a young man anymore, all right? Didn't go storming in like he used. Not to mention the psychic trauma from all those headwounds. Or at least that's what Andrew tried to convince him of.

The diner was an even bigger shambles, or maybe it just seemed that way because it had clearly been a cheerful, bright place, with white walls, pale wood chairs and red-checkered tablecloths. The chairs were now splintered, the white walls spattered with dried blood, the tablecloths torn to tiny pieces. Giles sneezed.

"So what you wanna do now?" Rona said, surveying the scene with crossed arms and a dispassionate face. Protective coloring, undoubtedly. He knew she was a passionate girl. Anger was passion.

"I’m going to do that magic you asked for. A divining spell."

He put his bag on the sagging counter and found the candles, chalks and charcoals he needed. He set Rona to clearing a space near the eye of the mess.

Nothing fancy was called for, just a basic pentagram and a brief spell. Which Andrew had programmed into his phone. The horror.

"D'you have anything of Maria's?" Giles asked.

Rona shook her head, as he expected.

It might as well be the letters then, the ones he'd found in the entrance. Pity both he and Rona had handled them.

He set the letters in the center of the rough pentagram. As he read the incantation from the tiny screen, he lit candles at the five points. Lavender smoke roiled up from the candles and flowed over the ground, covering the letter, and five white sparks coalesced into a firefly-sized light that skipped rapidly along the ground in what he assumed were Maria's footsteps. He snatched up the letters, stuffing them in his pocket as they followed the fetch. But although the fetch went to the front door, it doubled back on its own course and circled around the room.

Giles gestured Rona to back off. No point in clambering all over those chairs and tables again. Better wait to see where it ended up.

The fetch described another loop to the door, and danced over debris and broken furniture as if it wasn't there. Maria must have been jumping. The fetch hovered briefly before the back entrance they'd come in on and then disappeared into a side door. Must be the kitchen.

"She's still here?" Rona whispered.

Giles nodded. "She must have heard us."

"Or she's dead."

Rona shouldered past him and followed the fetch in, her stake raised.

He followed her inside, into some sort of kitchen, from the hulking shapes of the equipment along the walls.

The witchlight glowed faintly on the far side of the room. It was still at last; Maria was here, somewhere. He touched Rona's arm lightly, and when she turned to him, murmured, "Call her. She knows you." Rona nodded and strode into the room, stopping below the witchlight.

"Maria," she barked. "Maria, it's Rona. Come out!" She got no answer, and closed her fist around the heatless flame.

The acoustic tiles directly over her head shattered. In a burst of dust, a pale figure dropped onto her.

  1. Mexico



The river had shredded into a cloud of spinning droplets. Falling through eternal night, just like Faith with Wesley in her arms.

A carnival-barker voice brayed through the starry gulfs around them.

"Step right up, take a chance. You know you want to. So this ticket's a double? Twin sacrifices, twin souls. Introductions, please. We are the Lords of the Dance. Want to play the game?"

Wtf??

"Well, of course you do," the voice roared, "or you wouldn't be here. So the game's afoot. Take the carny ride, spend some time inside."

Faith thrashed, the corpse in her arms, trying to belly down into the wind-gusts. Slow their descent. And tried to snatch glimpses through tearing-up eyes. How fast were they falling?

"The spinning wheel turns, oh my, look at it go. Round and round. Where it stops, nobody knows. Even the gods can lose this game. So young to die. Oh my. One Death, Seven Death, House Corner, Blood Gatherer, Pus Master, Jaundice Master, Bone Scepter, Skull Scepter, Trash Master, Stab Master, Bloody Teeth, Bloody Claws it is, just as you say."

Whoever the ringmaster was, she wanted to fucking slay him.

Wesley gasped something, struggling in her hold. Also, he'd uncorpsified. Good to see, in fact five by five. "Hey Watcher. About to die here. Advice?"

Maybe now she’d get subtitles?

He craned to look past her shoulder. "Oh, blast."

"And quick, 'cause if there's a bottom, we're maggot burger patty."

And still the carnival-barker voice boomed around them: "Here are the rules: there are no rules. Survive. Three strikes you're out in this old ballgame. Now make the call and find the ball. Play well, my Ariel, my Caliban. Daddy's waiting."

There was a bottom. They landed tumbling, on dust soft as feathers. It exploded up around them, and Faith flipped to her feet and set herself for a fight. Only there was nobody to hit. Too bad.

They weren't back at the cenote with its hellmouth entrance. No, because that would have been easy.

This place looked like the prehistoric ancestor of every alley Faith had ever stalked vampires in. Only, colossal. Its walls towered upwards to infinity, into distances from which looming figures, far too big, leaned forward with their hands on their knees. They were alive. They shifted, a slow dreadful movement like that of monuments waking. Dimly stirring. Peering down.

A cascade of pebbles started under one statue's foot, and kept on falling. Time crawled forever before the sound reached her ears, a rumbling that built to multiple booms. Those tumbling pebbles were broken masonry fragments bigger than she was, and they struck the alley-floor a good hundred yards distant, bouncing and smashing.

"Time for the test," said the carnival-barker voice.

She located the source of the voice. Of course it was the biggest-ass statue of all. Great. Just great.

It loomed directly overhead. Its grin looked bigger than the Grand Canyon.

"You must prove your right to go on. Now enter the Houses of Pain."

That grin became a crack across the sky, splitting to admit agony.

  1. Chicago



The falling figure knocked Rona to the floor, and she bellowed.

Giles slapped the light switch.

When his eyes had adjusted to the light, he saw Rona struggling with a wild-eyed girl, presumably Maria, trying to hold on to her as Maria twisted and kicked and snapped her teeth. Blast it, they were too close together. And Rona had the tranquillizers.

Nicodemus' Banefire had a wide strike zone. He should have chosen a more focused spell. He hovered near the door, hesitating. Maria and Rona thrashed through the wreckage of the kitchen, further demolishing the furniture, but not demolishing each other. Rona was holding back, of course, but Maria should be inflicting far more damage. Was she still in there, fighting the effects of the spell?

If Maria was still in there, using Nicodemus' Banefire was out of the question. Giles couldn't say he wasn't relieved.

"Rona! The tranquillizers!" he shouted.

"Kinda ... busy ... here," huffed Rona. The struggle between her and Maria rolled them round the centre table, banging back and forth between grill and deep-fryer, bouncing one of the freezer doors open.

Giles dodged clattering colanders and tried to find something he could use to hit Maria on the head. In a caring and considerate way, of course. With the rogue Slayer Dana in California, he'd been able to send a backup team of twenty. Now it was him and Rona, talk about overstretched - ah. It looked like an oversized aluminium rolling pin, but more to the point, it looked like suitable head-bashing material.

He grabbed it, darted sideways between table and cookers and tried to find a gap in the girl-struggle that would allow him to hit Maria. Between a homicidal Maria and the mood Rona was in, bopping Rona on the head was an accident best avoided.

He lashed out, but a last-second jerk by Maria meant he gave Rona a blow to the elbow. Maria swore at him in Spanish.

So did Rona. "For fuck's sake, Giles, will you hit the right fucking person?"

"I am trying to, if you could hold her still!"

"If I could hold her still, I fucking well would!"

Maria snarled and kicked out at him.

Her boot hit his shin. The rolling pin clattered against the metal of the centre table, making his fingers sting. Then Maria hooked her leg around his ankle and swept him off his feet.

He crashed heavily, rolling pin still in hand. Above him the two Slayers grappled. Ah. Kneecap opportunity. He swung and missed. He didn't expect to receive Rona's boot in his ribs and be kicked out of the way.

"Ashdautas Vrasubatlat!"

"Vras snaga," Maria agreed. She spat out part of Rona's ear and swiveled towards Giles. "Snaga nar baj lufut."

"Snaga nar baj lufut!"" Rona, abandoning Maria, advanced towards Giles, graceful and deadly. Her shadow, behind her on the wall, showed not her short sturdy form, but something enormous, shapeless, darker than any shadow had a right to be.

"Vrasubatburuk ug butharubatsnaguk."

He wasn´t that fluent in the black speech, but they seemed to agree on killing him and calling him a slave. A coward.

Maria circled around from the other direction. "Snaga. Snaaaagaaa!"

The utter contempt and hatred in her voice chilled him to the bone.

They closed in from either end of the table, wearing chillingly identical feral smiles.

"Rona, what on earth - " Giles dodged back in time to avoid a tossed cleaver.

Rona grinned. Enjoying herself. She hadn't been aiming to kill. "Mabaj bot ob armauk."

"I'm sorry, I - " Giles stopped; clearly there was no point. Whatever had happened to Maria had obviously infected Rona too. He should have foreseen this. He'd known there was something odd happening with Slayers in general. How could he have imagined Rona to be exempt? How was a question for a moment when he wasn't in mortal danger.

Maria swaggered toward him, grinning. "Yeah, yeah, yeah, old man. Try to run."

She sounded like Faith.

Rona began to chant. "Duk’, vor menk’ uzum linel aveli apahov e Hovit Aarevi." Now Maria took up the chorus: "Heto Tesilk’ner spanel indz." They laughed, eerily synchronized, then went on together: "Tore im khach’y im paranots’i yev spanel indz."

Speaking in unison. Linked to each other. And to something else, which was sending them completely bonkers. What would happen if he disrupted the linkage? And how could he do that?

They lunged together. Hard Slayer hands clawed at him, the two of them shoving and pulling at him, laughing. Maybe he only survived the next few blurred minutes because neither one wanted to give him up to the other. Never mind. Spilt milk, wasn't it?

He ended up sprawled across, disturbingly, the meat preparation area's massive butcher block. Both Slayers crouched over him.

On him, actually. Maria's full weight pinned his legs. Rona clenched a fistful of his hair as she bent close, her face almost against his. Her eyes were all pupil.

She licked his nose. Maria batted at her, knocking her away. They ended up staring at each other instead of Giles, a fact for which he was definitely grateful.

They began to speak, sometimes in unison, sometimes one over the other. Faith, again. A chill went down Giles's spine. Armenian, Sanskrit, Latin, Babylonian. As if whatever spoke with their mouths was randomly rifling through its knowledge of human languages.

The two Slayers crouched on top of him. They stared into each other's faces like gigantic frogs about to mate. A brown hand moved like in a dance, down, to the ground cover of assorted ruined foodstuffs. Then came up again, daubed with a sticky mixture of Bolognese sauce and flour. Rona stroked the clotted red stuff on Maria's face as if it was Maybelline. It seemed a moment of great tenderness.

Then the two Slayers turned their faces to him as one, staring at him unblinking. Twin memories jumped him, as from a dream long ago. Raccoon-ringed eyes all vast dark pupil, foie-gras matted hair and ketchup-striped cheeks. And identical, accusatory expressions.

"Maiṁ yahām̐ pyāra karatā thā ki mērī mām̐ batā'ō, unhōnnē kahā. Cīnī mēṁ."

"Āpa vāstava mēṁ piśāca rōkanē kē li'ē jā rahā thā talavārōṁ sē bīsa laṛakiyōṁ kō bāhara bhējanē lagatā hai?"

"Er, well, strictly speaking that was Buffy's plan." Shut up, you berk. They're possessed.

"Ego et octo, et insano meum, cum lamia mater tu me tradidit."

"Yes, I did, I'm so sorry," he said and held off the snap of Maria's teeth at his throat. She scrabbled at his jacket, whining. Scraps of white paper fluttered as his pocket ripped. The bloody recruiting letters. He wasn't going to be able to fend them off more than, say, two seconds now. He closed his eyes.

　

Act Three

  1. Mexico



In the House of Fire, they burned forever.

In the House of Cold, they froze forever.

In the House of Knives, ditto with the forever. Only longer. It was the worst of all three Houses of Pain. Faith and Wes hung upsidedown from enormous ropes; blood dripped from above, and wherever a drip struck her, it cut like a knife. Blood like jam--thick and freezing cold--dripped from gashes over her whole body. It was collected in black shallow oval basins that never seemed to get full.

The ropes were made of hair, and the blood was dripping from a giant bleeding face looking down in despair. It was Faith's own face.

Just as she realized this, the face was gone and she was on her feet, staggering, limbs numb and blood clotted icily all over her, in the arena of the gods.

Blinding heat seared her. A wave of stench from the blood hit Faith's throat and tongue. Wesley helped her straighten. He seemed less affected, but why? The slow moving statues far above had leaned closer--maybe a few dozen yards, no more--but enough to bring their faces into clearer view. Ugh.

"A round of applause for the Slayer," said the one with the carnival-barker voice, and his face was the Mayor's, smiling kindly at her.

She yelled at him. "Enough stalling! When does this show start?"

"Right now," said the Mayor. "Play ball!" And the dark arena lit up.

They were in a painfully bright court, a hundred meters wide and twice as long, high slanted walls on both sides. Damn. Another House?

"The ballcourt of the dead," Wes said unexpectedly. "Ah."

Her skin crawled with badness.

Two figures advanced out of nowhere. An unshaven white dude on the right - Wesley’s twin - but he was a rotting corpse whose head slumped sideways, skin stripped away to expose teeth and skull. Spine parting, the head falling off. A dark-haired woman on the left, catching the head as it fell. Faith herself, again - what was with this mirror image thing? Evil Faith held up Evil Wesley's rotting head, and Evil Wesley's mouth grinned liplessly. Faith imagined the head bouncing down the steep steps of a sacrificial pyramid.

The woman who looked like Faith leered. "Wicked hot here, sis. Wanna play catch?"

She hurled the head straight at Faith.

Those stone gods were overhead again, pointing and laughing.

Faith dodged the incoming head and shouted up at the gods, "Gimme the rules!"

"These are the rules. There are no rules," the barker's voice boomed. "This is our game, mortal, and this is how we play. We always win."

  1. Chicago



A new sound pierced Giles’ eardrums while he waited for the final thwok.

A clatter, a yell. Rona and Maria growled. Slimed clothes squelched, cooking implements clanged. The pressure on his eyelids seemed to cease.

He couldn’t stand it any longer and opened his eyes.

A golden blond whirlwind, with tanned cheeks and over-knee boots flying, pushed the two young Slayers into the produce cabinet.

Buffy.

His breath left him in a great puff. He hadn't even known he was holding it.

Now he'd be safe.

But no sooner did he feel relief or other concerns sprang back in to battle for prevalence. Buffy must not become infected. He didn't want the two young Slayers dead, he didn't want Buffy to have one more dead girl on her conscience.

He couldn't hang back. This was where a Watcher came in, in the space for thought a Slayer created in the midst of battle.

Right. Rona had seemed utterly normal, if somewhat grumpy and graceless, until a few moments after they'd started fighting Maria.

"Buffy!" he called out. "Take care! It might be contagious. It could be the blood."

"I got plenty of blood on my new leather jacket in Katmandu, thanks for telling me now," Buffy said and whirled her axe in a gorgeous figure eight, keeping the young Slayers penned in among the wilted lettuce and cilantro. "So how long is the incubation period?"

He hesitated. "I, um, haven't a bloody clue."

"If it's not the blood," Buffy asked, dancing, easily holding the snarling, growling, speaking-in-tongues Slayers at bay, "what then?"

"It's always the blood, as Spike would say," Giles said absently and then could have bitten his tongue.

Rona had come in, with bare hands, had taken a reconnoitre in the diner without him, came back, still seemed normal.

No. Before that.

He dug into his pocket. The letters.

The Wolfram and Hart recruiting letter. Yes, Maria had wanted to be a lawyer, Rona had said. It must have arrived at the same time as the one he’d sent. His letter, signed by him, one of dozens mailed out to Slayers ... all over the world ...

He still had a pinch of the tracking powder. He discarded the Wolfram and Hart letter, and flung the powder over his own letter instead. And spoke: "Invenite Malum!"

The powder whirled over his letter. It zeroed in on his hand-written signature, flared, and evaporated.

The signature on his letter? His own signature?

"Buffy, it's this letter. It did it. They're bewitched or possessed or something of the kind. Drive them into the freezer so I can prepare an exorcism."

Buffy flicked a brief glance in his direction. "Get up on the counter, I need room to herd them."

Giles turned to obey her and found the brief rest had made all his muscles and ligaments realize how much they'd been abused. He suppressed a groan. Middle age was hell.

It happened faster than his eyes could track. Maria threw herself through Buffy's axe barrage, not caring that her blouse and chest became bloody ribbons and that one arm hung in shreds from her shoulders. She was inside Buffy’s defense, teeth bared and hands like claws. Slayer-strong claws. The axe came up on the other end of its swing, Buffy stepped back, swerved, and cleaved upwards between Maria's legs until the axe came out through her forehead.

And while Giles felt his mouth still dropping open and a scream prepare itself to hurtle out, Buffy had turned back to Rona and forced her a step nearer to the industrial freezer.

Smack.

Maria's body came down.

Splash. The blood that had fountained up splattered down moments later.

From her body, from the blood everywhere, black flecks rose and whirled. Buffy swung the axe again, dissipating them.

Warm spot on his forehead. Reflexively he reached up to wipe it off and his hand came back red.

"Buffeeeee!" his voice came out, far too late, ridiculously late. Everything had already happened. Story of his life.

Rona suddenly collapsed, face-down on the bloody floor.

"Sorry, Giles," Buffy panted.

  1. Mexico



Evil Wesley's head bounced, veered, pulled a U and came flying back, teeth snapping.

"Oh, no you don't," Faith said. She fielded the grisly head, ragged stump still dripping, and swung it in a high arc towards the far end. What was this – evil doppleganger fight night? She guessed so. Evil Faith jeered and clapped her hands. The skull came down with a splat, about a third of the way down the dusty length of the court.

And bounded straight up amidst clouds of grey dust. At the top of its curve, the head swivelled to face Faith. It grinned, and flew at her.

Okay, the laws of gravity obviously meant squat. The same for trajectory. She wasn't fooled. When it swerved at the last moment and went for Wes, she tackled him, taking them both down. The head shot over them with a blast like a bullet. A weird, thin screech trailed behind it: "Zooom!"

She wanted to punch its teeth in.

"Wes! How do we win!?"

"I don't know--"

"Zoooom!"

Back came the head, hurling from above. She blocked with her elbow. And then yelled, because the impact was all teeth and bone, jagged edges, painful. Like being hit by an obsidian-studded club.

"Zoooooom!" This time she rolled, taking Wes with her. Evil Faith was off to the side, pointing at her and laughing. The heat made her head balloon-light, and the aftereffects of the Houses of Pain left her arms soft as noodles, damn it. The dust stung her nose with a sharpness not usual for dust. Sulphur, or pepper, or both?

Wes was babbling something about Irish legends.

This time she didn’t roll fast enough. She did manage to get her arm up, lying on her back with Wesley half-under her, but the head hit her forearm and tumbled along it, teeth snapping, eyes rolling, lips flapping madly. She fended it off. It was trying to orient itself teeth-down and bury itself in her throat. Its hair pulled loose in her grasp, greasy tangles clinging between her fingers. Bits of rotting flesh flew everywhere.

"We have to win somehow," Wes shouted. "Go further down - find Father--"

Evil Wes's head abandoned the rolling contest. It began insanely to bounce itself on her arms and chest, chattering its teeth. Spit sprayed out of its mouth. "Yes, find Father!" it cried. Its voice was as shrill as fingernails on a blackboard. "Let’s eat Father! Zooooo-ooom!!"

Each time she fended off the head, she ended up with huge bloody bruises. Black patches studded with jagged teeth-wounds. This had to stop. Out of the corner of her eye she spotted Evil Faith in the act of cutting her own throat. Hell. Severed head number two was about to take flight.

Wesley yelled: "Do the opposite of what they want!"

This time when head number one hurled at her, she let it hit her in the throat and chow down with its long hungry teeth.

A jet of blood gushed into the air, but it stopped before Faith's head hit the ground.

Wesley cried, "Faith! No!"

It was hard to blink. Harder to focus. Or think. She was looking up at her own staggering headless body. From ground level. Her severed head rolled sideways and now she was seeing Wesley with his face contorted with grief and disgust.

Her body bent and picked her up, bloody hands cradling her, and placed her atop her own still spurting neck.

A slow light flowered overhead. As dust floated downward and settled, Evil Faith and Evil Wesley both fell apart and became hazes of dissipating fog. With a little sucking sound the flesh of Faith's neck reached for her head and closed the gap.

Silence from above. Then a hundred deafening thundercrack voices: "You win! Fools!"

The world's jaws split under their feet again.

They fell.

  1. Chicago



Aftermaths: they were worse than the actual battles, really. It hadn't been the case, once. When had the change come? In how many different manners can a non-Slayer's body be bruised? Let me count the ways ...

And the haunted look in Buffy’s eyes ...

He'd seen that look on so many young girls. Buffy. Faith. Countless others, under this new regime. It struck to the bone and left an ache that no physical bruise could: that wounded look, those lines of pain that spoke of a Slayer's suffering. Physical wounds healed so quickly, where Slayers were concerned. Vanished like wiped-off war paint. It was the psychological damage that lingered.

Buffy had jetted all the way from Kathmandu, doubtless with all the associated jet lag, only to find herself killing one of her sister Slayers; he knew how that would hit her.

Not just Buffy, either. Rona had the same drawn face, the same directionless stare.

He tilted the innocent-looking cereal bowl on the table. A filtering of grey ash stirred there, all that they’d been able to salvage of his ensorcelled letter. Ashes, and a pinch of firefly. Something swarmed briefly in the bottom of the bowl, burrowing deeper, burying itself. It reacted so rapidly to being uncovered that they hadn't yet managed to see more than glimpses, but it looked alive.

"Never seen anything like it," Rona said abruptly. She stood up from her chair, her posture hunched. Her hands clutched her elbows. She hadn’t washed her throat properly. Blood-streaks from her bitten ear still showed, like tear-tracks, trailing down from the clean white edge of the gauze bandaging. "Fuck it. Let's slay it. How?"

"If it is indeed a demon," Giles murmured, tilting the bowl again. "I expected a spell laid on the letter, not . . . this. It was in the signature of my letter, I believe. It isn't quite magic. It isn't anything I've ever read of."

"Looks kinda alive." Buffy leaned over the table. "And moves really fast, but I bet I can--"

"Don't!" Rona shouted.

She grabbed at Buffy’s wrist. But Buffy had already straightened, shrugging. "What? I'm not that blonde, you know."

But she also wrinkled her nose. "Giles, I've seen something like this before." She sounded puzzled. "But when? Phooey. Maybe I'm that blonde after all."

Rona abruptly clapped a hand to her mouth, bending forward convulsively. Giles said in his gentlest voice, "Rona?"

Rona swallowed. She said, "I ... think I remember it too. But it didn't affect you, Mr Giles." She swallowed again; he saw her throat work, and her chin jerked up as her eyes began rapidly to blink. "Not human beings. Normal human beings. When I was under its spell I looked at you, Mr Giles, but all I saw was a monster. So I attacked like a Slayer should. So ... Maria looked at her own mom and brother, and tried to destroy them. I, I was in her mind at the end, connected to her. I know she was glad to die."

He'd seen that look before too, on Buffy’s face. That weary stare, with or without the tears - Buffy had never been given to bouts of weeping - that stiffness of expression, slow to react even when her Slayer reflexes still worked with inhuman speed. That blankness that came of a fight almost abandoned. The further side of grief, a place he couldn’t reach. Rona might as well have been alone in the room; she was talking to herself, not them.

She stared at the ashes in the bowl. When had she drawn a knife? She raised it, slowly. For a second her reflection was clear in the shine of the blade - the girl studying the knife, its edge toward her throat, her face utterly bleak. Her hand juddered indecisively.

Giles drew in a shocked breath.

Buffy must have seen the same thing. She moved with Slayer speed to Rona, catching Rona’s hands and squeezing them. The knife clattered on the counter. "You were with her then." Buffy's voice was fiercely desolate. "She didn’t die alone. And it wasn’t your fault, it was mine. I killed her."

"Fuck that," Rona said. Her hands twisted in Buffy's, gripping back just as hard. "You had no choice."

Giles aborted his instinctive move toward them, and his words of Watcherly counsel. Now was not the time for his meddling. He held the bowl, watching the two Slayers hold each other, and knew they would get past this day's griefs.

Thank Heaven.

  1. Mexico



Faith and Wesley tumbled together, head over heels, like they were on some Ferris wheel with no safety bar, rocking the boats on purpose, armed with a fistful of tickets so they'd never have to stop. If this was what vacations were like, Faith was all for more.

All her wounds had vanished, healed, all weariness gone. Just like magic.

They were astronauts in outer space, joined in slow motion, outside everything. Not like a one-night-stand, no sticky sheets and empty heart when morning came. She'd always lived with her engine revved, cranked hot to the max and roaring for more, just so she'd know she was real. Now she'd been yanked off the FaithWorld raceway onto this carny ride. And she'd never seen his eyes one thousand percent alive before.

All sparkapalooza.

Falling straight down, surrendering to that magic carpet ride. Facing each other, hands interlaced and looking into each other's eyes. As if they were one, or two that were one, like twins. Beer and peanuts, trailer and park, the staking and the afterglow. Watcher and Slayer.

A feeling all shivery and unknown. Until now, she had always been alone.

Did mountains grow underground? There was a tree below, immense, the specks of birds scattering from its branches small as gnats.

Like a story she'd heard long ago. Green water, green leaves, melting wingfeathers. Falling asleep out of the sky into his arms. This kind of thing never happened to her. She'd slayed, she'd laid, but she never stayed, and that's it, that's all she wrote. And yet.

They fell into the Tree's topmost branches, and kept falling.

　

Act Four

  1. Mexico



A Tree.

It surrounded them. They fell through its topmost boughs, luckily sparse so far, leaves big as coaches. The light, near as Wesley could tell, came from the tree itself. Something like birds flew in the middle distance, and things like fish swam too, with fins of feathers, spiny flying-fish wings. Wisps of white cloud spun in what must be wind. And beyond, cavern walls.

Those walls seemed to ripple and move, but they were so far away he couldn't see them clearly.

A red ocean lay below. He could see it clearly through the immensity of the Tree's green branches. Islands that were knotted tangles of green root, humped big as volcanoes. And a smudge of rising smoke, as if from someone's ritual fire. Aha. Their target, he suspected.

They needed to slow their fall. He rather suspected the lords of the ballcourt would see little difference between delivering them intact to his father and getting them there as shells full of jelly.

"Faith!" he shouted into the wind. No need for more; she was already thinking ahead, twisting to start them spinning, aiming them. Leaves exploded around them. They burst through more leaves. A flower. Faith was wrapped around him now, taking the brunt of repeated impacts with whippy stems and twiglets.

The fronded leaves bounced like feathers. A stem broke in a spray of ... blood?

She'd seen it too. "What is this place?" she shouted. He had no sure answer. But he thought, suddenly, of the Deeper Well. Did it have more than one entrance?

Blasts of noise like faraway earthquakes shook the air. Everything was in slow motion, rotating around them as they fell: gusting air and the Tree's boughs, the root-islands below, the churning red ocean. Those distant, curving cavern walls were definitely moving, and they weren't walls. Immense, writhing coils, rather. On either side. Some green and some brown, but they were hazed by sheer distance, by clouds tattering in the wind. The perspective was difficult--did they curve inward, or outward?

Abruptly he got them in focus. And gasped.

He and Faith, mere specks, were falling through an epic battle between monsters, both some version of serpentine. Possibly even related, except that one of them appeared to be made of stone. Twin serpents, fighting - one stony yet green and feathered as the Tree, the other patterned in browns and golds. Clouds wreathed and blurred them. Until now, he hadn't grasped what was actually happening, the scope of it simply too big.

The brown serpent’s writhing coils were leviathan. The green monster was magnitudes larger, on a scale that beggared belief. Its titantic coils shone, plated with living stone. Cthulhoid green tentacles fronded them, each ten times as long as redwoods, fraying to feathery cloud at the tips. They stirred the sky and made the wind. Splatters of rain fell from the clouds, or was that saliva from opening jaws? Random mouths on the green tentacles, gaping in anguish. Random eyes rolling painfully. Maybe the ocean of the cenote below was really made of tears.

Those thrashing tentacles resembled the Tree, though smaller. Exactly resembled it, in fact: the leafy feathers, the supple boughs. Wait. No. Yes. Yes indeed, though he didn't quite believe it: the Tree was the green serpent's tail, wasn't it?

The entire immense Tree, just the tip of the monster's tail.

The brown-and-gold serpent was attacking its larger rival. In immense slow motion, it lunged at the green serpent’s coils, biting, gouging them with fangs that dripped an oilslick liquid. Great golden feathers framed its head, and its muzzle and eyemask were velvety with jaguar-patterns. Each time it sank its fangs in, the green serpent's scales spurted blood. The red ocean below was composed of blood, not tears. The root-like islands knotted vaguely, minor tentacles slapping the ocean surface, and the Tree itself began to shudder.

There could be no doubt it suffered. The shallow sea sloshed around it, as its stony surfaces bled freely, and still the serpent attacked it. And the bellows that echoed through the void sounded very much like a world crying in pain.

"Landing now!" Faith yelled, jerking him back to more immediate concerns. Moments later, indeed, they landed - exploding through one final clump of feathery greenery, leaving limbs bruised and bloody in their wake. Then a more solid surface hit them. She landed underneath, taking an impact which would have broken every bone in a normal girl’s body, and rolled away and flipped to her feet, grinning. They’d arrived.

The knife she held, black flint, came from the Houses of Pain. "Do these big guys come with nametags?" she asked, pointing up. He could guess the answer. One didn't need an Eyewitness Guide, here, to recognize the Witz monster: largest of all denizens of the earth's interior, ancient, sacred, magical. They had fallen down this shaft that resembled the Deeper Well - or a hellmouth - or maybe both? - into this place, the realm of the beast. The Witz’s den, whose walls were the Witz itself. Its walls, its heart, the Tree and its guardian: all one, vast as a world ... and the other serpent was savaging the Tree’s root, wasn’t it?

Again, he tasted his failure to protect Drogyn, that other Guardian – bitter as poison ashes.

"Green stone, that's our champion," he said decisively."The Witz monster. Perhaps the other serpent ought to be identified with Kukulcan, given the circumstances. In any case, no good can come of the Witz’s destruction. Perhaps my father can wait—"

He should have known better. Naturally a voice interrupted. He knew it well.

"What the bloody hell are you doing here?"

Father.

  1. Mexico



Wesley's gut clenched, and just for a moment he turned ten again. How many times had he heard his father's voice in just that tone, crisp and withering and aimed in his direction? Too many to count. Too painful to consider.

Father stood on a ridge, spellbook in hand, scant yards above the brink of the red-churned waters. His business suit and tie were surely ill-advised, but he looked in his element just the same.

It wasn't until after his hand had moved and his index finger had pulled a phantom trigger three times that Wesley understood he had gone for a gun that wasn't there. But he could be reasonably sure that this version of Roger Wyndham-Pryce was no robot.

Nor a simalcrum, or other mystic image. His father had signed a contract agreeing to be here, and his father never broke a contract.

Not the wording of a contract, anyway. He was too much the magus for that. But the spirit of one ...

A small fire burned incense. Other trappings of magic adorned the ridge, small oddments arranged in a pattern. Precolumbian crystal skull, granite sphere six inches in diameter, oak leaves and the skin of an adder, specifically a one-eyed Norse adder. How many generations had it taken to breed one for the purpose? "Vanderpoele's Hundred-and-Eight Scales of Ladron," Wesley found himself saying. "You called up the serpent to draw the Witz? Isn't that a bit presumptuous? Surely you know that killing a Witz monster will - "

"Don't teach me my trade, boy," his father said, lifting the book fractionally and turning a page. "Are you really fool enough to believe that's what I'm doing?"

Wesley struggled to keep his voice from shaking. "You signed a contract with Wolfram and Hart!"

"Please. You did the same. Daemonical amateurs, that lot, though I have liaised with their masters from time to time."

Wesley briefly closed his eyes. He asked the only question that mattered: "Why did you sign? What could they offer you?"

"I asked for you to be freed."

All words fled Wesley. Faith turned to him, her brow furrowed, her gaze moving between him and his father as if trying to gauge where the pain flowed from.

From my father to me, he wanted to shout, as always.

She stuck out her hand, hovered it over his. This was new territory for them both. Could a Slayer console a Watcher? he must have made a sound in his throat, something muted and anguished, because she moved her body between him and his father. To defend him if necessary. If only that kind of defence could be psychic. Her father had been a monster too, he remembered.

So gentle, her hand on his.

All the old scars opened, all the old wounds burst and flooded him with their bitter pus. How long before they ran clean? He'd lost his enjoyment of food and fresh air and sleep, but kept the ability to feel pain. Why didn't being dead spare him the agony of living?

He found he'd fallen to his knees. The mottled and blood-warm surface, inflexible as the shell of a tortoise, did not give under him. Veins marbled it, spidering darkly. It smelled of rock-dust and green life. A living thing, and the feathered serpent was attacking it. While he and his father ripped each other apart, the Witz was struggling to survive.

"You meant to save me," Wesley said in a small voice.

"Why does that come as a surprise?"

Faith was still looking from him to Father and back. She said, "You're trying to save Wes? Uhh ... from what?"

She took a step back. He watched her face change – the look of realization and horror.

She said, "You signed a contract too."

"Yes."

Faith said simply, "Why?"

Ah. He remembered the Mayor. She'd signed up with the Mayor out of ill-luck and lack of hope. Now she was realizing he'd been keeping secrets. Would she remember the moment in the alley, when he'd tried to tell her, and died for it?

He said, "Everyone at Angel Investigations signed contracts."

Her steady gaze didn't waver. She must know there was more.

He needn't have searched for words. His father could be relied upon to embarrass him without fail.

"He died, the fool," his father said. "Now they own his soul. He's a walking corpse, my dear. A revenant. I do hope you haven't had relations with him."

Yes, he could always trust Father. Faith didn't bat an eye, though. She only moved closer to him. And shrugged. "So he's dead, huh. Guess that makes you Zombie Dad." Her grin suddenly bloomed, fierce and tender. "Go on, Wes, eat his brains. I'll watch."

Roger said: "How touching. Now if I may, I have a spell to perform."

He turned his back, raising both hands. The little fire at his feet flared up, the spell paraphernalia around it washed with red light. He made a gesture, and with the toe of one impeccable wingtip, nudged the crystal skull into the flames.

Beneath Wesley's feet, the root surface shuddered. Feather-leaves thrashed above, on the branches that looked more like tentacles with every writhe of protest.

The sea of blood began to froth.

A twist of his father's hand, and dead flower-petals - many kinds, but all long-perished, twisted and brown - scattered over the skull. He turned a page in the enormous spell-book, handily nearby on what appeared to be a small portable music stand. How like Roger Wyndham-Pryce, the consummate Watcher, to come prepared with such a thing.

Above them, the slow battle continued between titans: the feathered serpent which was perhaps Kukulkan, and the Witz monster.

The serpent – yes, it must be Kukulkan. It was the god to whom Father was supposed to sacrifice himself. So why was Father calling it?

No - this was not a spell of summoning. Not with those ingredients. Something was wrong here. Something else was ... Wes said grimly: "Wait. You always have an agenda. You don't really plan to sacrifice yourself, do you?"

Faith tilted her head at that, her balance shifting. Poised again for action, the flint blade in her grip.

Father said, "Oh, I do. If I didn’t, Wolfram and Hart’s clairvoyants would have seen it, and they wouldn’t have let me enter into the contract. I mean to do exactly what I promised."

"But you do mean to break the contract somehow. I know you. But ... what does that accomplish ..."

"It'll piss the serpent off at Wolfram and Hart, for one thing." Faith was frowning. "Big-time, I bet. Like, pizza never came, let's destroy L.A.? Would it do that?"

Wesley said, "You mean for Kukulkan to destroy Wolfram and Hart."

His father merely lifted an eyebrow. "It is a god, after all. And I’m aware that Wolfram and Hart never bargains in good faith. Let you go? Ha. They wouldn't. But if they’re fools enough to assume I’m a fool too, well - let them discover their error."

"... You’re planning to destroy them so my contract will be void ... ?"

"Once the feathered serpent rises from the cenote well of hearts, it will destroy everything between it and its tiende sacrifice." Father gave the wintry smile he used only when explaining the obvious. "That’s why my contract specified that I come here to serve as sacrifice. To draw it into battle with the Witz. But the fine print does not require me to stay put." An ironic shrug. "A blunder on their part. My spell, when complete, will transport me directly to Wolfram and Hart's new headquarters. The serpent will follow."

Wesley said blankly, "But you'll still die."

"Die? Yes. No matter what, at this point. But unlike some, not in vain." Another gesture over the fire. "Full marks, my lad."

He turned his gaze back to the book, relaxed and confident and utterly self-contained. It was infuriating, as always.

He spoke. And the serpent obviously heard, its roar reverberating through the wellshaft, a solid wall of sound blasting Wesley's hair back. Down came its head, thrusting through the fronds of what no longer looked like a tree. Teeth like the spires of Oxford, moss included. Liquid fire dripped from its chin, searing the air with a crackle reminiscent of frying bacon. Droplets struck the sea in detonations of steam. Myth suddenly writ large, it fixed Roger with its hot yellow gaze, and opened jaws that seemed wide enough to engulf the world.

Nictitating membranes snapped up across serpentine eyes, and then slowly slid back down. Father gestured, gaze now holding the monster's; his hands wove incantations in lines of white light. "I regret the collateral damage," he said, with his driest smile. "But really, who will mourn Los Angeles?"

Wesley said, "I’m not the one who’s making mistakes here. Father, this is futile. Wolfram and Hart sold my contract to the Immortal weeks ago."

Father's teeth closed together, clack. The smooth flow of his gestures broke off. He whispered, "You fool." Then he roared: "You FOOL!!"

Wesley's skin went numb. He had enough time to note the purple mottling of incipient coronary in his father's complexion, before his ability to see color also cut out. From the strain of facing down his father, he supposed. Nevertheless. He took one step forward and snatched the book from the lectern.

And flung it pinwheeling into the sea of blood.

"You fool, you’ve ruined everything! My book - there were spells in that book I could have used even now— Now we’ll all die!"

How like Father - blaming Wesley for saving his life, probably blaming Wesley for being such a fool that his contract was bought secretly by the Immortal. In his father’s eyes, everything about Wesley was a mistake.

"The Witz will die too," Father said. His face had gone gray. "Dead in the serpent's rampage. Just one more victim of your blunders, Wesley."

"No," Wesley said firmly. "It won't eat you. This--" This fiasco, he thought. "--all this was futile. We’re all going to get out of here now."

But Father was looking at him with an expression of disappointment greater than ever before. "No, boy. You’ve just broken my contract for me."

A monochrome glow shone from his chest, growing. In a heartbeat his entire midriff was on fire, real crackling fire. His head went back, all that unendurable superiority finally wiped away. His hair ignited, and his hands. Then he was a ball of whipping flame.

The groan that burst through the hiss of heat was not a human sound; it must come from superheated air being forced out of his lungs. His head tipped back, gaze seeking Wesley’s. The fire consumed his eyes and filled his mouth, burning away the contents of his skull, and then the rest of his face.

In a heartbeat more, before Wes could reach him, he was gone.

A charred shell collapsing in fragments that swirled out of Wesley's convulsive snatch. Greasy soot settling on his face, and a few white cinders, stinging hot.

Above them, the serpent's head began to descend, jaws opening.

Father was dead. His numb mind barely comprehended. Father, dead. He'd lost everything. And like Father, he and Faith would now die.

But he had something his father hadn’t: a Slayer. "Faith," Wesley said. She was already jittering in place, ready to spring; only concern for him held her back. She'd save them. "Go."

  1. Mexico



The serpent's head fell toward them, and became everything.

Faith sprang.

Straight at the snake, a black mote aimed for its eye. Wicked energy boiled off her, and this was going to be one of the good fights, the kind that ended up better than sex. Not just back of the car with a hottie, but a stretch limo parked in Times Square and it's fucking New Year's Eve. In other words, party time.

And look at the sheer size of tonight's hot stuff! Banzai!

Okay. Concentrate, Faith. What did she have going for her, this fight? Always got to start out looking for what you had, going up against the monster, any monster. It was slow. Big and slow, gotta love the combination - so here was her advantage: she was almost too small for it to notice, and a zillion times faster.

Like now. It was only just beginning to focus on her when she hit.

She flipped, and bounced. Felt the impact from her heels to the top of her skull, which almost jarred off like a baseball cap. Then she was in flight again, but in a different direction. Toward the Tree, landing on a branch. According to plan, dude.

The serpent’s breath blasted her.

Like all of New Jersey's garbage rolled up with a meth lab, spewed out by Godzilla. Poison droplets flicked against her skin, igniting in tiny searing flashes, healing instantly. A rolling roar shook the cenote, vibrating in her skull. Like thunder. Like doom.

And she leaped, springing high, the way only vamps and Slayers could. Bouncing like a superhero from branch to branch, getting above Jumbo. Yelling her head off. And yeah, it was turning, coming after her.

Away from Wesley.

Its jaws snapped shut, missing by a mile. In the lull between roars came Wes' distant shout: "Careful! It can probably sense Slayer magic!"

Great. Let it follow her then.

Another roar. It was moving faster now, head snaking in pursuit. Oops. Her cute flint knife was no good against this. Slivers in the feet, to a demon that big - that is, if it had feet, which it didn't.

She'd make herself into a human knife then. Wedge herself between those monster teeth and let it go crazy trying to pry her out. Not like it had hands to operate a toothpick. She wasn’t gonna give up.

At last. Jumbo's jaws were reopening. Vaster than whatever and more slow.

She hurled herself into them.

Landed on its tongue, a flexing surface broad as a suburban roadway. Wetness spat up from the impact of her sandaled feet. Where it splashed her, it burned. Faith tumbled. The tongue kicked reflexively under her, like a tapped kneecap but in slo-mo, and she plunged her little knife into it, stabbing elbow-deep and letting the cutting edge drag. A concussion of a groan vibrated every bone in her body, rang through her ears and deafened her.

A modern-day Captain Blood, she ploughed a furrow down the length of the tongue, all the way to the forked tip, and off.

Blood splattered in buckets around her. The tongue snapped up and sideways, back into Jumbo's closing jaws.

She hit leaves, like springy pine-boughs, and ricocheted off them sideways. Supersonic Slayer speed, dude. Behind her, Jumbo's jaws were opening again. She caught a branch with her free hand, spun around its axle and went flying back. Lacy red waterfalls splashed from the snake's scaled lips. The killer tongue flopped, blood-petals flinging upward to decorate fangs bigger than houses.

She dove heel-first into its tongue again. Another roar blasted her, almost jarring the knife out of her grip. She shot across the width of its jaws, cutting a second slash, and leaped between two back-teeth. Bouncing, reversed in midair. Back at it--

She threw herself sideways, and plunged knife-first into its eye.

The biggest roar yet. As it flung its head upward, snake-swift at last, Faith went flying. So did her knife, spinning off somewhere, lost.

One of her arms stopped working, flopping dead off her shoulder in a blaze of stunning pain. Dislocated and all the tendons ripped loose, maybe. Her vision blurred in and out of focus. Her spine had been whiplashed hard enough to quality for the bungee hall of fame.

A car hit her lower back. Fuck. Must be a branch, but--

She crashed through more branches, and the snake was already turning, mouth agape, going back for poor Wes.

Couldn't give up. Wouldn't give up. She flung herself back into the air, only now she wasn't like a springing Slayer, more a floppy Faith-doll with half the stuffing knocked out. She didn't let it matter. Still had one hand, and even bare hands could reach the heart if you thrust them in with enough force. That black haze was boiling off her again, and her back had stopped hurting, she could feel her shoulder knitting, she screamed like the end of the world and dove, headfirst into its other eye.

She didn’t know what language she was yelling in. Her hands were claws now, ripping, tearing. Black smoke streamed from the corners of her mouth.

Jumbo went into convulsions, yeehaw. It flung her free, sailing through the air. Its tail went by, just the lashing tip but still big enough to splat her like a windshield bug. She landed in elastic branches and ping-ponged back at it. She'd blinded it. She was gonna ace this. Kick straight through the pupil into the brain and slay herself a god.

Look at her. A Slayer. Backed by her Watcher. She saw herself in the snake's maimed eye, coming for it, leaping to the kill, all Slayer. Wicked black demon goo wreathing her everywhere. She remembered all the way back to forever. Primal.

She was in mid-leap, still laughing, when the snake's mouth opened wide. By then she was in freefall. She tried to aeroplane sideways.

Didn't quite make it before the jaws closed around her.

  1. Mexico



Not her. Not Faith.

From far below, Wesley watched her die.

The serpent’s blunt nose concussed the root-island, pulverizing the spot where Roger Wyndham-Pryce had died. Wesley was thrown clear by the impact, tumbling almost into the red sea. He didn’t try to save himself. Now he’d die too. But the serpent’s head lifted, withdrawing into the boughs of the Tree; it blurred as it went, dematerializing. Of course. Its sacrifice was gone. Father’s death had accomplished that much.

And it had been well fed. On Faith.

On Faith—It had been his fault. He’d done this.

His father's death meant nothing next to this. When had he fallen to hands and knees? He'd gouged nail-cuts into his own palms and never felt it. His heart skipped, stopped with a hammer-blow of pain, hurried back again. But now cloven in two like a stone table.

He was a Watcher, and his Slayer was dead. He should rend his cheeks and rub ashes on his head.

Every Watcher knew that all Slayers died like this, suddenly, casually, but this was Faith! Faith. Gone without ceremony, as if dying was her daily business. Not even time to a word, a last look. No body left, even. Just ... gone.

He slumped.

He heard a voice.

He looked up dimly. Ixtab. He'd forgotten her existence. She peered around, and then down at him, and her harsh face betrayed nothing.

"The snake. It - swallowed--" His voice broke. "Faith is-- Why did you even come?"

"To take you back."

"No. I have to ..." His words ran out. He only stared, mouth working.

"To stay? No. You defile this place." She thrust out one hand. "The serpent is gone. He will not return. We go." A slow blink, out of the eyes of a solitary cat, something that did not understand love or companionship. Then a more human look, the expression of the young girl who was also Ixtab: "I am Slayer. You are Watcher. I say: come, and you follow."

Did he want to go back? To a world without Faith.

Without his father, either. Well, that at least was karmic balance. Without a purpose - no, he had a purpose. He was a Watcher, like his father before him. He still had duty.

Numbly, he took Ixtab's hand, and followed her up.

  1. London



Jet lag was another thing that didn't get easier with age. Giles rubbed the bridge of his nose, blinked wearily and pulled another file off the stack. Andrew had been wrong. "Slayerlust"; a condition that mimicked, initially, the Slayer's understandable desire to use her remarkable, if demonic, powers for whatever she felt like using them for and the hell with the fallout. But the cases Andrew had been tracking all had an extra boost, something twisting the knife, filling the Slayers up with true demonic essence, creating a dark rag, bloodlust, false memories of eons past. Every girl in the files Andrew had collected had had a letter from Slayer.org sometime in the week before the outbreak. Every letter had been contaminated.

His father's pen, the one passed on to him when he graduated from the Watcher's Academy. The fountain pen he'd used to sign those letters. The one he kept in his jacket pocket, where any pickpocket with fifteen seconds to work could get at it.

Both the pen and the demonic speck he'd brought back from Chicago were sealed now in cold iron, bound with the strongest spells Giles could conjure. He didn't trust them for an instant, even so. If only Willow was here to help.

Studying them, destroying them - these things could await Willow's return.

Every piece of correspondence he had signed, every jotted note on notebooks or grimoires, everything the ink had touched was contaminated and must be destroyed.

Roger had been right. They hadn't been careful enough on security. They didn't have the staff to handle regular maintenance on the magical wards, on top of everything else. Though it hadn't been the computer that proved itself the weak point in their defenses; it was the old-fashioned technology.

There was no point dwelling on it. Giles took a deep breath and opened the next file.

And focused on it unseeingly. His signature drove those young women insane. The most elementary precautions would have prevented it. There was no excuse. He wasn't competent to run this organization. He had to do better than this.

But before he could focus on discovering who'd done it, and why, he still had to put his mind to containing the chaos.

Focus. Concentrate.

A hand appeared over his shoulder and set down a cup of coffee, and he took a swig. Black, two sugars. "Thanks, Andrew, that's perfect," he muttered without raising his eyes.

"Not exactly," said a familiar voice, and Giles jerked around.

"Robson?"

"I offered to bring the coffee up for him," said the other man, and swung into a chair. "He looks as shagged-out as you do, old man. If you'll forgive my saying."

Giles nodded. "It's been pretty non-stop." He closed his eyes briefly and opened them. His eyelids felt like sand. "Which brings me to ask: what fresh disaster brings you here?"

Robson shook his head. "None. Or rather, all of them, but nothing new. Giles, look around." Giles turned his head. Every flat surface was covered in teetering piles of files, papers, printouts and flow charts. Robson was sitting on the only chair in the room with nothing stacked on it. "Please don't tell me that you don't need any help."

Giles was silent. It was pointless to protest.

"Roger's an obnoxious ass and we both know it. I'm sure whatever he said to you was precisely calculated to get your back up."

"I’m sure it was," Giles said wearily.

"But the offer still stands," Robson continued. "You need trained hands. We can supply them. Really, we used to compete to be assigned to a Slayer. What Watcher hasn’t dreamed of that? And now we’ve got enough for everyone. You know what our mistake was, back when they appeared? We were suddenly outnumbered, and it scared us."

He didn’t look scared. Eager, rather. Giles said, "They’re in charge now, not us. You know that? And what about operating funds?"

"Done. Everything we’ve got. And Roger's gone missing, if that makes a difference."

"Really?"

"He hasn't been seen for days. We're trying to feel worried."

Giles snorted with laughter at Robson's grin. "Did Roger have any friends at all?"

"None I've met. In any case, you won't have to deal with him. We'll keep him corralled somewhere if he does show up."

Giles looked again around the room. The place was a tip. And every file a young Slayer who needed backup, or a Slayerlust victim to clean up after. And on top of all, Willow was still missing, and the Immortal was up to something; the usual Council problems, which in the old days took the full staff to deal with all by themselves.

He felt, abruptly, a hundred years old.

"Robson," he said, "that sounds bloody marvelous. When can you start?"

　

　

Somewhere in the Deeper Well

Only moments had passed. Or she might have been here forever.

Willow's time sense, like so much else, had gone walkies. Thoughts came, vague and pointless. They had no beginning, no middle, no end. Nonsequential, right? Regrets chasing their tails. Never mind.

She didn’t even feel like herself.

What if she was really the doppelganger, who only thought she was the original Willow? Identity theft was a common postmodern problem. Which self was that she'd seen, on another bridge below her, just before she fell? Looking up. When there was an up. A lame epitaph: 'that Rosenberg kid had her ups and downs'.

Was she already dead? Was this what it was, to be dead? To hang here in nothingness, able to make feeble jokes forevermore, but not to do? Buffy had talked about being at peace, and loved, and at rest. But Buffy had gone to heaven. No reason to think that was where Willow was.

Still, this didn't fit her image of hell. There should be more - she tried to think. There ought to be demons, and headless people with axes sticking out of them, and Wolfram and Hart lawyers. And screaming, hell dimensions ought to have lots of screaming.

How long had she been a prisoner here? Time to lift her hands - but not her magical hands, the ones she'd used to touch and move from afar so often they were second nature to her. Those were going going long gone. Time to lift her real hands. Get back to the oldest tricks in the wicca's deck of cards, simple gestures and words of power. That still might work. That is, if she could manage to move.

One finger barely wiggling, that was all. A word mouthed through numb lips. She’d intended a charm of speaking, attempting for the umpteenth time to send a warning to Giles. Or Andrew, or Wesley – any Watcher out there, really. Or a witch, or a psychic hotline, or a ouija board party. Anybody equipped to hear her. She held her breath, eyes gritted tight against a prickle of tears. Please work, tiny charm. Please, somebody, listen!

The faintest trickle of magick answered. She felt the fizz. Then it spazzed on her, curse it, sending her sight instead of voice.

She saw visions.

In some heavenly realm, Wesley and Faith fought a monster. And failed.

In – what was it, Chicago? yeah, she’d visited, she knew those streets – Giles struggled to save young Slayers. And failed.

Demonic voices jeered. The images blurred, becoming reality tv on a big floaty screen, in a boardroom of all the places. Creepy. She didn’t know the suits lounging around the yacht-sized table, but she knew too many tentacles and too-loud purple checks when she saw them, and the big ugly horror presiding over the entertainment oughta get professional wardrobe help. Maybe from Mr Sauve over there – did she recognise him after all? Felt like she should. Wait, those guys were watching Giles and Wes and Faith. And laughing.

Was it happening now, as she hung here? Or was the future, or the past?

The Watcher Reality Show ended, to ironic handclapping from the audience, and then Mr Sauve bowed to big ugly horrible and vanished. Exit stage left, smiling like a villain.

Everything blurred away. Time twisted and untwisted. Or maybe her mind did.

The real world swam slowly, luxuriantly back into focus. She was spinning, hung upside-down somewhere in the vastness of the Deeper Well. The sarcophagi of gods floated around her. Bridges - some up, some down, some oriented at stranger angles - cut across the Well's silent gulfs. Goddess, this place was huge. She couldn't even see walls.

Something was happening over there, beyond that bridge. Three cocoons. Someone was messing with them. They split open, spitting out limp creatures that looked human. One Raggedy Ann, two Raggedy Andys. Three scarecrows made of straw. Chorus of _If I only had a brain_.

She strained to watch. The rag dolls were alive, yeah. Had to be, because someone she couldn't quite see poured something down their throats, so they must be capable of swallowing. And a low voice laughed, speaking words of power, as sarcophagi creaked open, and something dark transferred from the coffins to the limp humans.

The rag dolls inflated, blowing up like balloons and growing huge, up and out and bulbous with excrescences; there were tentacles and the sound of a hundred thousand insects chittering. Monsters clambering out of the Deeper Well. Oh, shit.

They departed. The dear departed. Everything had gone ... dull, again.

She strained desperately to move. Musta twitched, because the shadowy not-there figure seemed to rush at her, coming up close, like a gust of wind in her face. Peering menacingly at her. She rolled her eyes at it, at him. Didn’t she know this guy? The guy from the boardroom. She croaked his name.

But seemed like he wasn’t coming to her rescue, because he only smiled that caressing smile, stroked her cheek and turned away, and at his casual gesture, she lost the knowledge of his identity. Sucked right out of her with a sensation like being hollowed by a licking tongue.

Droplets of red crept past her line of vision.

Spilt red ink. Her own tears? No. Blood. A curtain of blood-drops, lazily floating.

Blood from her limp, outflung hands. Rising in pinprick red dots all over the skin of every finger and spinning away without pain. She hadn't even felt it start. It made spirals of its own volition, mimicking her own spin-motion as she rotated in the Well's shaft. Tortuously, she managed to look down, at more spirals rotating below her thigh-level. Her lovely green boots had soaked through with dark wetness, which was now splattering away from her boot-toes. Not only both hands bleeding, but both feet too.

And slowly in the silent Well it came to her that her magick was draining away just like that, once a galaxy magnificently spinning, now mere suds circling the drain. Was being bled out of her, to fuel … something. With her magick went her life: for the blood was the life.

One last moment of charmed vision, from the world beyond the Well. Giles sitting slumped at his desk, head in his hands. Wesley plummeting into an abyss, screaming Faith’s name. Two Watchers. Two victims. Lost, tricked, duped, doomed. The tiny bright pictures dwindled, and winked out.

She could hear her heart slowing. Blood draining reluctantly out of her shivering limbs, off her fingers, arcane spirals writing glyphs across the aether. Her grief and life itself fading along with her magical energies. Two thousand body parts, mucho mojo and a fair bit of knowledge/wisdom, and she liked to think a soul in there somewhere too, all gone soon.

Tara. Kennedy. Huh, and too bad she'd never stolen a kiss from that Illyria hottie

before she went

goodbye-girl


End file.
